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Like many of you, I am appalled that torture is even a subject for discussion on our national stage. I sit back and think "How the Hell did we end up here?". But I am equally dismayed at how we've allowed the right to frame the debate.
Time and time again, I hear our side speak out against the abuses in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere by talking about how immoral and appalling they are. While I wholeheartedly agree, these points will not shut down this outrageous dialog. It plays right into the stereotype of us on the left as coddling apologists who don't understand what horrible people terrorists are, and how urgent their threats can be. It feeds in to the premise that we're naive about the potential violence in the world today, that we lack the guts and backbone to do what must be done in a post-911 world, blah blah blah...
Even the argument that torture puts our own troops at risk is ineffective. When the right mentions the word "troops", they are talking about an abstract image of toy soldiers marching in lock step, following John Wayne to victory in some sort of nationalistic pipe dream. Any attempt to humanize them is viewed by the right as more maternalistic coddling.
There are two points that we need to bring to the discussion repeatedly and loudly, two points with the potency to shut down this absurd and disgusting dialog dead in its tracks.
Point 1: TORTURE DOESN'T WORK. Life is not an action movie. If Jack Bauer or Clint Eastwood or Batman beats up on a bad guy and threatens to drop him off a cliff, the cliche that he always provides accurate, complete information is a fantasy, a plot device intended to move a story along. Real torture is as effective in getting real information as watching Fox News. Just ask John McCain.
There are far more effective ways to extract information from an interrogation subject. The CIA knows this, the FBI knows this. The only ones who don't seem to get it are the neocon idiots in the Republican party.
Point 2: TORTURE IS AN ACT OF COWARDICE. There is nothing brave about pitting yourself against an opponent who is unarmed, blindfolded, and helpless. It does not take guts to attack someone who is incapable of fighting back. Am I calling our troops cowards? Of course not (my Rumsfeld moment for the day). That's why they shouldn't be mandated to commit such acts. It is beneath them. The only act more cowardly than torture is endorsing torture from thousands of miles away in a cushy office. The neocons would have us become a nation of amoral bullying cowards, like themselves.
These two points shatter the whole "we need to do what is necessary to defend ourselves" argument, and exposes this whole issue for what it is, an attempt by power hungry zealots to shred our cherished American principles and morals for their own depraved, deluded fantasies of violence and revenge.
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